Loserville USA, where just because a team isn’t playing, doesn’t mean they can’t be supplying bad news.
A part of me wants to thank Percy Harvin for the last 48 hours. It’s as if he knew that talk radio and Twitter were slowing down a bit with the lull in the sports calendar, and he wanted to fire things up a bit.
And boy, did he ever.
The good ‘ol arc of the malcontented pro athlete is usually predictable. Guy says there are some things he isn’t happy with, guy insinuates he may rather be elsewhere, guy makes public display of not being seen. In 2012, we can add the always enjoyable “guy defends position and/or fuels fire on Twitter” to the mix. This is usually followed by either a holdout, or speculation about the possibility of a holdout, ending when one side decides to cave.
(As a sidebar, I love Twitter. It’s humanity unfiltered, simultaneously bringing the most insightful and astoundingly ignorant opinions to you instantly. Sure, it adds to the “microwave dinner over home cooking” feel that’s all over the place these days, but that genie came out of the bottle with the Internet years ago, I say we press on and see where this ship beaches.)
I’m not sure if I can recall a time in which the cycle played out more quickly than this one, a timeline (with fan reaction):
Tuesday afternoon – Percy Harvin cryptically talks about being unhappy with several issues (“Well this can’t be good, he must want more money.”)
Wednesday morning – It’s reported that Harvin has requested a trade (“Aw crap, somebody pay this guy more money before things get really ugly.”)
Wednesday afternoon – Vikings GM says they’re not trading Percy Harvin (“If Randy Moss can get traded, anybody can. Give him more money.”)
Wednesday afternoon – Percy Harvin skips mandatory practice (“Geez, he’s really playing hardball on this money thing.”)
Wednesday evening – Bernard Berrian tweets that he’s not surprised Harvin is upset with the Vikings (“I can only assume that if he’s using a phone to do this, it was not thrown to him.”)
Wednesday night – Harvin takes to Twitter to say this whole thing is not about money (“Riiiiiiiiight.”)
Thursday morning – Harvin is back at practice (“Sweet, they must’ve reassured him they’d take care of the money.”)
Thursday afternoon – Harvin tweets once again about having a great practice and that he will see Vikings fans at training camp (“Must’ve been a sizeable amount of money.”)
I could be wrong in my assumption that this whole thing was about cash. It would be nice to think that some player was kicking up this kind of fuss because of genuine concern about the best way for the team to win, but I’ve been jaded far past that point. Every time some pro says “it’s not about the money”, it usually takes them mere moments to demonstrate that it is in fact, about the money.
Not that there’d be anything wrong with that being the motivation in this case. Percy Harvin is a highly skilled player on a bad team, playing a brutally violent game with short windows of opportunity. Not to mention by far the best receiver on a roster where he’s the third-highest paid. Not to mention, you could argue that Harvin is better than a few high-profile receivers that got healthy contracts this offseason. Add all this stuff up, and I’d argue it’d be a surprise if he didn’t demand more money coming into this year.
I’m all for respecting contracts when it comes to real life, in fact the world couldn’t function without them. But in the goofy land of the NFL, where every blockbuster deal comes with two sets of numbers, the actual pay and the fantasy millions that’ll never be earned, a contract doesn’t mean much. Are there limits? Of course. A player making these kind of disputes an annual occurrence is quickly going to become more trouble than he’s worth. But for a guy who’s obviously underpaid, crucially needed by his team, and playing a sport where he’s one big hit from an uncertain future? Who are we to say he’s wrong to want added security?
Bargaining power makes the NFL go round, the same forces that got the Vikings their stadium a few weeks ago should ultimately drive the team to (within reason) fulfill Percy Harvin’s monetary demands. This isn’t to say they should pay him like a #1 receiver, or even like the true open-market free agent he’ll be in a couple of years. But Steve Johnson will make $7 million this season, and Harvin less than $1 million. You could have a healthy debate over which player you’d rather have, so what does that tell you? And yes, I know Johnson was a free agent, the point is that the disparity shouldn’t be that large.
The last lame argument a few peoples have thrown out is that Harvin did this to himself, with knucklehead actions that caused him to fall in the draft, limiting his rookie contract. That may be true, but when you give Jerome Simpson $2 million dollars for 13 games, fresh off getting busted with a dumpster full of pot, your organization has effectively lost the high ground on that conversation. I’m no Percy apologist either, thought he’d be too small to take the punishment and wanted the Vikings to draft Michael Oher. Willing to say I was wrong on that, not quite to dead wrong, but may be there before both careers are done.
The scary part of all this for Vikings fans? What if Harvin is being honest when he says it’s not about money? What if a highly skilled football player who’s played on championship teams likes so little of what he sees from this team at the moment that he wants out? Having dealt with years of the Wolves, Wild and Twins being unable to attract or retain star players, it’s almost too much to fathom the Vikings being thrown into the same limbo. This is the one team, and the one league, where things operate on a truly even playing field. Now if some factor is at play that will make Minnesota the pariah of the NFL amongst current players and potential free agents?
Well the thought of a guy holding out for more cash is comparably a dream scenario.
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